Dr. Amos E. Friend died on June 11, 1983 at the age of 84 of cancer, having retired two years previously upon learning of his inoperable illness. Despite the debilitating effects of his sickness and its treatment he walked erect and with his accustomed vigor until shortly before his death, and he never let the grim nature of his affliction interfere with his love of life.

No one among my acquaintances had a greater love of life nor a greater zest for living than Amos Friend, and it radiated to all about him. His "joie de vivre" was expressed in his great love of travel; for the pleasures of a good yarn, story or book; for the excitement of the theater and the concert hall; for the joys of an upland game hunt or a successful cast into a stream or lake; for the thrills of roughing it on foot or horseback in the mountains; for a round of skeet or trap shooting; for a bit of singing; or for an occasional social game of golf. He was, in many respects, Manchester's "Man for All Seasons or "Renaissance Man".

Amos Friend will be remembered by his medical colleagues and his legion of patients not only for his superb artistry as a physician and surgeon and for the high esteem in which he was held by his colleagues in his profession, but also for his endless kindnesses, his never-failing courtesy, his graciousness and good manners, and for his thoughtfulness for all at all times. He was a rare man among men!

Though Amos Friend lived a full four-score and four years and should have shown some of the effects of the ravages of time, he will always be remembered as one who was always youthful in appearance, young in his ideas, interests and activities, and boyish in the sense that he was constantly seeking and exploring and traveling as befits a boy; a pleasant paradox that explains his inability to grow old.

A large unfillable void now exists in our community, for we have lost "a man to whom was given so much of heaven and so much of earth".